#MyFirstPostRevisited

Hi everyone! Lisa from Life of an El Paso Woman tagged me to participate in the My Very First Post challenge. The challenge was started by blogger Sarah Brentyn.

Here are the rules for this challenge below:

• No cheating. (It must be your first post. Not your second post, not one you love…first post only.)
• Link back to the person who tagged you (thank them if you feel like it or, if not, curse them with a plague of ladybugs).

Other rules:

• Cut and paste your old post into a new post or reblog your own bad self. (Either way is fine but NO editing.)
• Put the hashtag #MyFirstPostRevisited in your title.
• Tag…um…five (5) other bloggers to take up this challenge.
• Notify your tags in the comment section of their blog (don’t just hope they notice a pingback somewhere in their spam).
• Feel free to cut and paste the badge to use in your post.
• Include “the rules” in your post.

My first blog post is titled “MLK Weekend”. In it I tell you why I started blogging 9 years ago. I took many breaks from blogging. A few years in fact until 2013 when I made an effort to be more consistent. This post was made January 22, 2008. I was pregnant and I was married to my ex-husband. Check it out here:

Today is my first day back at work after observing MLK’s birthday yesterday. It was a low key day. I mostly slept and then went grocery shopping. We don’t sale shop during his birthday out of respect for one of the greatest men that ever lived. We remembered and talked politics. Mostly the economy, the baby and the upcoming move. I realize now that I am pregnant, anything pops into my head and I want to discuss it. I can’t seem to retain information for long periods of time either.

Rewind…
My name is Tikeetha and I have been married for about 5 1/2 years to Lydell “aka” Lee Thomas. Thus, after much force I took his last name. Actually, it wasn’t bad, Lee stated that he wanted his last name on my name somewhere. He didn’t care if I hyphenated or changed my last name entirely. He wanted everyone to know that I was a married woman. It was crazy because he acted like you couldn’t see the big ring on my finger. So, after 5 1/2 years of marriage, Lee and I find ourselves being able to reproduce. We are still astonished that God has granted us this ability. We just found out that we are expecting a boy this May. I knew I was having a son; however, Lee was in denial. He insisted that we were having a girl, because genetically, every female in my family up through my grandmother had given birth to a girl. That was a lie, but I let him believe it. Even when my grandma did her famous “hand test” to determine I was having a boy, he was still in denial. He harassed her and wanted statistical information to the fact that she had predicated sexes of babies in our family for years. He wanted her to admit that she has been wrong and to indicate that her test doesn’t have a 100% accuracy rate. I couldn’t believe it. So, when I happily found out that we were having a boy, I called Granny to let her know. She was tickled pink. She said, “I knew it was a boy, I just didn’t want to hurt Lee’s feelings”.

Fast Forward to 3 days ago…
Lee and I had dinner with some friends. I love this time because I enjoy telling his friends the harassing and embarrassing things he tells me so that they can laugh at him. So, over dinner I begin to tell them how my husband comes to me a few days earlier to indicate that he thinks he has Lou Gehrig’s aka “ALS” disease. After laughing in hysteria for almost 10 minutes, I asked him what makes you think you have Lou Gehrig’s disease? He said, “I was researching on the web and I think I have the symptoms”. Now, here is an excerpt from an article off of WebMD that indicates what ALS is:

“Over a period of months or years, ALS causes increasing muscle weakness, inability to control movement, and problems with speaking, swallowing, and breathing. The first sign of ALS is usually slight weakness in one leg, one hand, the face, or the tongue. Other problems may include increasing clumsiness and difficulty performing tasks that require precise movements of the fingers and hands. Frequent muscle twitching may occur. The weakness slowly spreads to the arms and legs over a period of months or years. As the nerves continue to waste away and decrease in number, the muscle cells that would normally be stimulated by those nerves also start to waste away, and the muscles weaken.

It is important to remember that having muscle weakness, fatigue, stiffness, and twitching doesn’t necessarily mean that you have ALS.”

I asked Lee, how long have you been feeling this way, “about a week”. I said “Ok, you are now over 30, overweight and have no desire to workout, so could it just be that you are experiencing a fatigue with your weight?” He said “maybe”. So over dinner, I bring up the Lou Gehrig’s disease and everyone is laughing at him like he has two heads. Once the laughter dies down, the question again is asked why do you think you have Lou Gehrig’s disease. He answers, “When you are having a child, you start to think about your immortality and the pains in your body. You won’t think it’s funny if it comes back that I have it.” My husband is impossible. Please pray for me as I continue to document my path from “A Thomas Point of View.

Summary Note:  What’s weird is that he was feeling these problems and had self-diagnosed his own medical condition and we didn’t take it seriously. Fast forward to August of that year and he had multiple strokes and was diagnosed with a disease that causes his blood to thicken and create clots and lupus. He knew something was wrong with his body, but his doctor didn’t run tests to determine if something is wrong.

Please feel free to participate. Of course, there is no obligation! However, this is a great way to catch up any new followers to your blog and what made you start blogging, so I hope you’ll join in.  I nominate the following bloggers to participate:

KC Wise at Black.Bunched.Mass.Mom

Terry at Spearfruit

Michelle Malone at Two Are Better Than One

KE Garland at KE Garland

Ameena at Randoms By a Random

 

 

Want to keep in touch? You can find me on social media at the following links:  Twitter @mskeeinmd, Facebook page A Thomas Point of View and my Instagram page https://www.instagram.com/mskeeinmd/.